


i do think that im very approachable, as one of the guys. but maybe i need to be even approachabler.

by genitivecase



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Alternate Universe - Radio, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, E-mail, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:47:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genitivecase/pseuds/genitivecase
Summary: Eddie’s job kind of sucked shit.He knew it would. He could sense just by looking at the listing (in an actual, physical newspaper, like it was the fucking nineties or some shit), innocuous words on smudgy, soft newsprint, that it was going to suck shit, but he had applied for it anyway.Full time opportunity for Internet security officer. $60K+. Health, dental. Night hours.---attachments au - eddie reads company emails, richie sends company emails. they get together eventually
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	i do think that im very approachable, as one of the guys. but maybe i need to be even approachabler.

**Author's Note:**

> wow first fic for this fandom! first fic on my new account! exciting!  
> full disclosure i have 22k+ words written for a totally different it chap 2 fic and i thought oh, haha, this'll be a nice fun break from that, something easy i can write and it'll be done in like three thousand words. clearly that didnt happen. anyway, enjoy, and expect the second chapter soon!  
> title from the office ep "email surveillance"

Eddie’s job kind of sucked shit.

He knew it would. He could sense just by looking at the listing (in an actual, physical newspaper, like it was the fucking nineties or some shit), at those innocuous words on smudgy, soft newsprint, that it was going to suck shit, but he had applied for it anyway.

_Full time opportunity for Internet security officer. $60K+. Health, dental. Night hours._

Maybe he was overqualified (for the actual work he was doing, not the job title). Maybe they were shitty hours. He was definitely getting paid too much. He was pretty sure his boss had just Googled “internet security officer average pay” and slapped that number down, regardless of the actual _effort_ and _skill_ that was going into this particular job, but Eddie supposed he couldn’t really complain about that. Maybe the actual job was boring as hell, since he basically just had to babysit some email-sorting program that was doing all the hard work for him, and maybe he spent most of his shift in a mostly-dark office borrowing someone else’s cubicle, eating tupperware “dinners” and wishing, above all else, that he at least had some kind of hobby to fall back on, because he was really going to go crazy just sitting there filtering emails. Briefly, Eddie had considered just not showing up for most of the week. He could let the flagged emails build up in the system until he _really_ had some work to do and then put in some actual, honest work hours on Friday or something. His boss wouldn’t notice. His boss wouldn’t _care_. But Eddie would feel like shit, kind of, and he still wouldn’t have anything interesting to do, so he’d be spending a lot more time at home.

This was actually the best his marriage had been going for months. Eddie tried not to think about that - how he and Myra had been snapping at each other and fighting, that he’d nearly thrown a glass at a wall because he hadn’t taken his medication and she thought he should and was yelling about it (a fight which felt very familiar outside of their marriage, actually, though he was hesitant to say she was acting like his mother), that Myra actually _had_ thrown a dish, or rather, let it tumble theatrically out of her hand into the wall nearest her. She had claimed, shaking, that Eddie’s snapping had frightened her, but she had been yelling first and Eddie saw, when he bent down to collect the ceramic shards for her, that her facial expression had almost completely changed when she thought he wasn’t looking, and that she hadn’t looked afraid at all.

Things were better now, since they couldn’t spend any time together. Myra still worked a regular nine-to-five and Eddie started around nine at night. Eddie would get back at some ungodly hour when Myra was still asleep and she would leave before he woke up (weirdly around noon or two in the afternoon, like his body couldn’t make the switch to being a full-time night person). With the commute, there were only three-ish precious hours in which Myra and Eddie had to be in the same apartment per day. Myra could complain all she liked (as she always had, as she could always be trusted to) about Eddie’s schedule and what it must be doing to his body, and how serious a thing like circadian rhythm is for a person’s overall health, but at least they weren’t throwing dishes.

The point of this being: the job sucked shit, and he was bored, and he couldn’t figure a way to stop being bored, and he certainly couldn’t fix it by spending more time at home or by getting a regular daytime job, because then he’d (God forbid) have to see his wife.

Eddie picked at whatever salad-ish situation Myra had made for him. She had lovingly, _lovingly_ prepared a “wide array” of dishes in equally sized, red-topped tupperwares for him to bring to work. She insisted, at least, that each dish was different, as it was important for the palate to always remain interested so as to properly absorb the necessary vitamins, but Eddie found that they were mostly variations on salads. He had heard Myra throw around words like _kale_ and _deconstructed_ and _clean eating_ and Eddie had decided that he might as well take the food instead of another fight, and then he’d thought he was probably a real shit husband for being annoyed at his wife for meal prepping for his night job, and then, seated at a computer which he shared with some daytime worker who repeatedly left notes about his leaving crumbs (which was impossible, as Eddie was really just eating a lot of carrot and lettuce, and he was notoriously neat and tidy, _fuck_ you, Carol), he stabbed at something purplish and leafy and threw it angrily into his mouth. There had been a time, Eddie thought, where he enjoyed vegetables. He was sure of it. He could nearly picture a day in college where the briefest taste of broccoli could have brought him to tears. But this dinner tasted exactly the same as every dinner he had eaten since he and Myra had gotten married, and he wasn’t sure vegetables tasted like anything to him anymore.

The program was taking a while to load. Eddie closed his eyes, thinking that if he focused hard enough he might unlock some unknown flavor in this particular leaf that he hadn’t noticed before, but he just felt it get soggy and bitter in his mouth, and he listened to the whir of a floor cleaning machine upstairs and the shuffle of the corresponding custodian, and finally, finally, the ping of the system telling him he had twelve flagged emails.

The system worked like this:

Certain words (inappropriate words, generally, and some words that just indicated a lack of productivity or professionalism like: ass, fuck, shit, pussy, a variety of slurs, the phrase “fantasy football,” etc) were not allowed. The system would dig through any emails sent on the company internet through company emails and pull out ones with inappropriate words and flag them. Eddie would look through them manually, decide if they breached any rules or if they had been incorrectly flagged, and then either send a notice to the sender or dispose of the email. Supposedly a certain number of notices to one person would require Eddie to contact a higher up. Supposedly this would encourage people to stop using company time and resources for idle chit-chatty emails. Supposedly this would help people focus on work. Eddie found the whole thing kind of rich, because he was sure people would just find new and amusing ways to work around the words you weren’t allowed to say, and because Eddie’s boss _knew_ the job was a waste of time and had actually told Eddie he didn’t care what shit he got up to the rest of the night so long as he dealt with those few emails at some point. He had suggested surfing Reddit, crossword puzzles, or maybe an online class through the local community college. This would probably be a good opportunity for Eddie to finally learn a foreign language, a task which had always been on the periphery of his to-do list because it seemed like the kind of thing a person would do, though Eddie had no special predilection towards one language or another, or even a real desire to learn one. But, God - aside from the emails, his entire night was severely boring.

Eddie actually kind of liked the email part, but it was never as good as he wanted it to be. He was nosy by nature and liked the idea of being allowed to (of being explicitly told to, it was his _job_ ) root through someone else’s email, particularly emails which the system apparently thought were salacious enough to bring to his attention. They were hardly ever interesting. Sometimes someone had clearly made a typo and ended up with a curse or a slur where they meant something completely mundane. Sometimes someone was quoting something. Sometimes the draft text of a book ended up in an email, all the easier for an editor to communicate what issues they had with a particular scene, and the scene had one of the unallowed words. Only once was it anything interesting, and then it had been rather gross. Eddie skipped the notice stage entirely and forwarded the entire thread to his boss. He couldn’t be sure, since he was never there when others were, but he thought the original perpetrator had been fired.

There was nothing good in these twelve. Someone misspelled _shirt_. Someone told someone else to fuck off casually and in a friendly manner, which seemed so benign a thing to get a citation for that Eddie considered not sending one. Someone was mad about a deadline which had been moved up. Most of them, actually, were identical and rather gross to read, and looked so obviously like spam that Eddie sent out some information about virus protection instead of giving the offending accounts demerits.

Eddie speared another leaf and deposited it in his mouth. He had put off checking the emails for as long as he could after he clocked in. The entirety of his job had taken about fifteen minutes. He didn’t get off for another several hours. Above him, the custodian continued to whirr away at the floors. Below him, Eddie knew there was a break room with vending machines full of chips and candies and beef jerky and soda, and he knew he had a crumpled set of dollar bills in his back pocket, and he thought about how Myra would be sure to sense the saturated fats on him as soon as he walked in the door.

He really, _really_ needed a hobby.

\---

Richie Tozier was living the dream, honestly.

The hours were bad. He wasn’t going to lie - the hours were bad. He was still stuck working his dumb, boring receptionist gig until the network believed he was bringing in enough listeners to _really_ pay him the good stuff, but he was finally, _finally_ working in radio. Even if he was still kind of in a probationary period, the good thing about late-nite listeners was that they were an incredibly loyal fanbase, as there seemed to be little for an insomniac to do consistently at three in the morning. You could try a club, if you were in your twenties and had the money to throw around, or maybe knitting, but if you were a tired insomniac, one who could only lay in bed and wish they were asleep, or if you were a truck driver stuck awake behind the wheel, or if you were one of the other unlucky bastards who got stuck working at three in the morning, there was really little else to do but listen to Richie’s radio show.

Radio was a dying art, Richie’s father had told him. Presumably Wentworth intended to communicate to Richie that he needed to pick a career that would actually be around in another twenty years, but all Richie had heard was _this thing needs a revival, you could try and make one_.

So Richie had. It was kind of perfect. He got to play the music he wanted to. He got to do his voices. He had to run that over in his head sometimes - he got _paid_ to do his _voices_ , the ones people had always made fun of him for when he did them compulsively. He liked his sound technician. The hours were shit, obviously, but Richie had never been one to go to bed early anyway, and there wasn’t much he ever needed to do in the morning besides sit at a desk and pretend to work, so he couldn’t find it in himself to mind all that much. The only thing - really, this was the main kicker - was that working at night was a tad too lonely for Richie’s tastes. The office was largely empty and sounds echoed up and down the hallway, paper watercooler cups would be scattered messily from the day rush out, and the streets on his way home were only just starting to wake up and bustle again. It was hard to see his friends when they were at work when he was free and he was sleeping or working when they were free. The entire thing, as exciting and perfect as it was, made him feel like he was living and working in a ghost town. He tried to always keep up the pep for his listeners - he did have loyal ones, which was insane and made him bug out a little if he thought about it too hard for too long - but it was hard not to be affected by it. He felt like he was talking to himself.

So, yeah. Aside from the crippling loneliness and the exhaustion of working two jobs, he was living the dream.

\---

**From: Richard Tozier**

**To: William Denbrough**

**Sent: Is this my apple in the Garden of Eden?**

Dude, I am begging on my hands and knees. Stop sending your Doordash to the front desk if I can’t also eat it. Speaking of, your Doordash is here. You have thirty seconds before it disappears. Thirty… twenty-nine… twenty-eight… 

**William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Do NOT eat my Egg McMuffin. All my emotions are riding on that thing. Stand by for extraction in T-minus five minutes.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** I can’t believe you expect your McDonalds breakfast to survive five minutes alone with me. Where are you anyway? I can’t see you at your cubicle.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I’m not in yet. Ordered Doordash on the subway thinking I would get there around when it did. Got a late start this morning. Am willing to pay ransom for the McMuffin.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** You don’t even have to be here. Authors don’t have to be here. You choose to sit in a shitty cubicle in a shittier chair all day for no reason, meanwhile I HAVE to be here or it’s “unprofessional” and I could get “fired.” I hate that about you.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Well. You _are_ the receptionist. And I write better when I’m in an actual working environment instead of like, in bed.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** So it has nothing to do with the fact that you wanna bang that sexy editor you sometimes see at the water cooler?

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I don’t want to bang him. I’m married. I just think he’s a very talented editor. Do you think I can get him to work on my new book?

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Richie, I can see your fucking hand in my McDonalds bag from the elevator. Brace for impact.

\---

This didn’t actually seem that bad to Eddie.

The emails were definitely a waste of company time. They were definitely personal emails. They had definitely hit on a bunch of flagged words, though Eddie thought some of those words were stupider than others. He could see how “ass” and “fucking” might be problematic, but was it really such a big deal if “Doordash” showed up in an email? He guessed it was indicative of not-working, but it just seemed so pointless. The entire exchange had only taken about five minutes and neither Richard (Richie?) Tozier nor William Denbrough had gotten flagged for the rest of the day, so did it _really_ matter?

(It did, obviously. Eddie’s job, his _only_ piece of legitimate work his entire shift, was to comb through flagged emails and send warnings. Richard Tozier and William Denbrough had gotten flagged. They needed a warning. The only time Eddie wasn’t supposed to shoot off a warning was when an email had been incorrectly flagged, and they had definitely deserved to get flagged.)

Eddie picked absently at his dinner. This one relied heavily on spinach, a vegetable Eddie detested when it was cooked and tolerated when it was raw. He knew, before even opening the tupperware, that Myra had cooked it. She had certain theories about certain vegetables “releasing more vitamins” once they’d been cooked and Eddie thought it would be too exhausting to try and figure out whether or not she was making it up. He thought again of the vending machine downstairs and longed for the Doritos he knew were resting inside, perched at the edges of their rows, just waiting to be knocked out. Instead of getting up and delivering a single, wrinkled dollar unto the machine, Eddie struggled to spear some cold, soggy spinach on his plastic fork with one hand while scrolling through the rest of the emails with his other. There was nothing nearly so interesting as Richard Tozier and William Denbrough. A slur here. A spam email there. His boss, actually, had said “shit” in an email, and Eddie debated sending him a warning of his own. On one hand, his boss was stupid. He had stressed to Eddie the fact that the rule applied to everyone and that no one was above the filter, but he also didn’t seem the type to be so conniving as to toss a spare “shit” into an otherwise acceptable conversation just to see if Eddie would catch it. Just in case, Eddie sent a notification.

His cursor hovered over the “clear messages” button. He scanned the emails again. On a second pass, he could justify it: the receptionist was notifying one of the authors that he had a delivery waiting at reception. The author was notifying the receptionist that he wasn’t in yet, but was on his way. Phrased like that, the exchange didn’t seem excessively unprofessional. Certainly not strike worthy. Practically nothing.

Eddie cleared the inbox.

\---

**From: William Denbrough**

**To: Richard Tozier**

**Subject: Top Secret. Classified.**

Can you Google something for me? I don’t want my computer to get flagged.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Rude to flag _my_ computer instead. Can’t writers just Google anything and call it research? Whatever porn you’re looking for is going to look way more suspicious coming from my computer.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Shut up. It’s not porn. I need you to Google how to make a pipe bomb and then email me a condensed version of the information.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Are you trying to frame me for something? You should have asked for this in person. The fuzz can just read these emails and see that you were the one who wanted to blow something up, not me. Plus, that guy who reads the flagged emails. I bet he’ll turn you in.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Your targeted ads are already weird. I don’t want weird targeted ads. Pretend I didn’t tell you this, but it’s for my new book.

Is there really someone reading flagged emails? I thought that was just a scare tactic so people would stop goofing off on company time.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** You mean the way you’re goofing off on company time?

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I wouldn’t be goofing off if someone would tell me how to make a pipe bomb.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Only for you, Big Bill. Definitely ended up on a watchlist for Googling that in an office building in New York, but it’s done. Attached are a handful of PDFs on pipe bomb making, since I guess that’s what turns you on in your hour of need.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I’m not in an “hour of need” with regards to being turned on. And thank you for the research.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Tell that to the Egg McMuffin you made love to last week.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** What happens between me and my breakfast sandwich is my business. Tell me none of these attachments are porn because you thought it would be funny.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Fine. Either don’t open the fourth attachment or turn your sound down and be discrete.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Maybe I’ll just delete it.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** What, you don’t wanna see a daddy obliterate a twink? The aftercare is very tender. You might shed a tear.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I’m going to miss you when you inevitably get fired for sending porn through your work email.

\---

Eddie was hiding in his bathroom.

He spent a lot of time in his bathroom on weekends. Neither he nor Myra had work and so neither of them had excuses not to be near each other. Myra always wanted to _do_ something and then cancel it (like go to the farmers market, and then decide that Eddie’s allergies were too delicate. Or go to the movies, but then realize Eddie couldn’t digest popcorn properly and that it would probably be better if they just stayed home) and they always ended up in the same room while Myra fussed over something or another and Eddie sat there and listened and listened and listened.

So. He spent a lot of time in the bathroom. It was a risky gambit at first, because Myra had thought he was having bowel issues and wanted to overhaul his diet to accommodate, but then he made up something about meditation and long baths and making sure he was properly clean, and she had relented. It was the only room in their house where Eddie could reliably be alone. If he went to lie down in the bedroom, she would ask if he was feeling sick and complain about the terrible hours his job gave him. If he was in the kitchen, she would fuss about allergens and about how she knew best how to feed him. The living room meant an inevitable stand-off about what to watch on TV, or an argument about watching too much TV, or reading silently, eye twitching every time he heard the grating scrape of her page turning.

But the bathroom was quiet. It was private. It had a door that locked. He really did enjoy long baths, but he didn’t always take them. Sometimes he just ran them - a huge waste of water, he knew - and then sat, fully clothed, on the edge of the sink. He had a few books in there, but he tended to dick around on his phone or just sit. He couldn’t believe his life was so shitty that he had to run away to the bathroom and just _sit_ , like he didn’t get enough of that at work.

Speaking of work, he probably should have sent warnings to Richard Tozier and William Denbrough by now. They were consistent offenders, either unable or unwilling to rewrite their time-wasting personal chats into something the flagging program couldn’t recognize, and it was getting frankly ridiculous at this point. Eddie _always_ had emails from the two of them when he clocked in. They were wasting company time every single day. Eddie didn’t mean to sound like a bootlicker, but that was, to be fair, his entire job.

“Eddie?” called Myra. Eddie didn’t think she was right outside the bathroom door, but she was approaching it. “Are you almost done in there?”

“Yeah, Myra,” Eddie called back. He slid off the counter and made some general splashing noises in the bathwater, like he was shifting to get up.

“ _The Price is Right_ is almost on!” said Myra. She was right on the other side of the door now.

“I’ll be just a moment, dear!” said Eddie. He winced. He hated calling her “dear,” but sometimes it flew out of his mouth without his consent when he was trying to placate her.

Eddie could hear her tutting on the other side of the door, but eventually he heard the soft padding of her footsteps lead away from the bathroom. Eddie undressed and got in the bath.

It wasn’t hot anymore. He hadn’t thought it would be. Lukewarm bathwater had actually always seemed somewhat gross to him, but he couldn’t sit next to Myra on the couch without slightly damp skin and hair, or she’d know he hadn’t really been taking a bath. He dunked his head under the water, thought suddenly about Richard Tozier and William Denbrough and the twink-obliterating porn the two had shared, and gasped while still underwater. The resulting cough made him shoot out of the water, hacking loudly and flinging water up over the sides of the tub.

“Everything okay?” called Myra. Eddie could already hear her panicked little footsteps approaching the bathroom again.

“Fine, Myra!” said Eddie. “I’m getting out now!”

The thing was, he knew for sure that Richard Tozier hadn’t sent William Denbrough porn. Eddie had decided that actually sending pornography would have been a step too far, so he’d opened all of the attachments. Richard Tozier had sent mostly accurate and thorough research, but the fourth attachment was a PDF that read “MADE YOU LOOK ;P” in big, bolded letters. Eddie had felt so stupid - Richard had, in fact, made him look - but he still hadn’t flagged either Richard or William over it. Still, the memory hit him the wrong way. Eddie couldn’t imagine having the kind of friends you could joke with like that. He couldn’t figure out if that was sad or if it was a good thing he didn’t make shitty jokes.

“Eddie,” said Myra. The doorknob rattled. “Why is the door locked? You know that isn’t safe. What if you hit your head in there?”

Eddie ducked his head under the water again and exhaled, focusing on the feel of air bubbles against his skin. When he came back up, he swiped water away from his face with two damp hands and said, “Sorry, Myra. I’m getting out now.”

“There’s a whole host of things that could go wrong. You know the bathroom is the room a person is most likely to have accidents in. You could slip and fall in there,” she said.

“I know, Myra,” said Eddie. He was careful not to get water everywhere when he stepped out of the bath, pulling the drain plug and stepping gingerly onto the bathmat.

“You could drown, you know. What if you fell asleep in the bath? Maybe you should take showers instead,” said Myra.

“I won’t fall asleep in the bath,” said Eddie.

The doorknob jiggled again. “Eddie, why did you lock the door? How can I look after you if you’ve locked the door?”

Eddie wrapped a large bath towel around himself. The bath towels were perhaps his favorite thing Myra had ever purchased - big and fluffy, like beach towels, in muted grey-blue colors. He sighed, pressed his fingers to his temple in exasperation, and then unlocked the door and pulled it open.

“I’m fine, Myra,” said Eddie.

Myra wrinkled her nose. “Eddie, don’t just stand there. You’ll drip all over the hardwood.”

“Let me by, then,” said Eddie.

Myra stepped to the side. Eddie had the distinct impression that she was furious with him, but that she couldn’t find something legitimate enough to complain about to yell at him for. Eddie dripped bathwater all down the hallway, thinking, _Good._

\---

**From: Richard Tozier**

**To: William Denbrough**

**Subject: Should I moonlight as a romance novelist y/n????**

Here’s my idea: sexy, short king erotica writer uses his manuscript to flirt with his editor. Every week he sends his editor new pages based on conversations they’ve had. Lots of stuff about the editor’s kind eyes and farmer’s build. Extreme sexual tension in the workplace which can only be fixed by intense makeout sessions by the water cooler. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I think that would be considered sexual harassment. And I’m not sure what you’re implying. Regardless, don’t quit your day job.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** God, I’d love to quit my day job. Hey, you know any insomniacs who wanna listen to me make fart jokes at three A.M.?

Don’t be coy. I saw you and Mike flirting by the water cooler. Are we still pretending you don’t have a crush on him? You can’t say someone has kind eyes and not have a crush on them.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I’m still extremely married. Even if he does have kind eyes. I just think he’s a good editor. And if I meet any insomniacs I’ll be sure to pass along the message.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** I like how you addressed the kind eye thing first. I can’t wait for you two to fuck.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I can’t believe there’s really someone reading our emails. You say shit like that all the time and we’ve never gotten in trouble.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Avoiding the subject? And hey - if there _is_ someone reading this, consider tuning in to _Trashmouth Tozier!_ when you’re in the office late! If I get enough listeners I can quit and you won’t have to read my emails anymore!

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Dare to dream.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Excuse me, most of that message was for this mysterious email guy. Don’t be rude by interrupting.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** So, if you don’t have a crush on Mike, you don’t care if I know a certain something about a certain something.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I absolutely do not care. Do you know if he’s taking on new clients? I would care about that.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Richie?

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I can see you laughing from my desk. You don’t know shit.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** But if you do know something, legally you have to tell me, your best friend and confidant.

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** My confidant is Stan. There is a bond that comes from Hebrew school that one can never shake.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** You’re a nightmare person. I hate you.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Richie, do NOT talk to Mike.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** Do not look at me while you’re talking to Mike. Is he coming over here? I’m going to kill you. Stop smiling, you’re dead to me.

 **William Denbrough to Richard Tozier** I think I just blacked out. Did you hear anything? Did we even talk about my book?

 **Richard Tozier to William Denbrough** Dude, you have it so bad.

\---

 _Trashmouth Tozier!_ was, as revealed by a Google search, a nightly radio show hosted by Richard “Richie” Tozier from three to four in the morning. Old episodes were stored in podcast form on the station’s website, which was a garish little HTML thing that made Eddie’s eyes hurt to look at. It turned out you could listen to the live show through the same website, though the audio player seemed finicky and unforthcoming. Eddie only just got it to cooperate at 3:13, well after the show had already started.

“ _\- again, that was_ This Must Be The Place _by Talking Heads. For all our latecomers out there, I’m Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier, and it’s the middle of the fucking night._ ”

There was a kerfuffle in the background.

“ _I’m getting word I’m not allowed to say ‘fuck’ on air. Shit, I did it again. Well, they met me before they hired me. Anyway, who wants to hear some jams? Feel free to call in with a request, but in the meantime, here’s_ It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me _by my dear personal friend Billy Joel. Wait, I’m getting word I’m not allowed to explicitly lie on the air, but how does my boss know I’m not friends with Billy Joel? I could be friends with Billy Joel! I could -_ ”

He was cut off by the start of the song. Presumably Richie was the one to play the songs, so he cut _himself_ off, but it still made Eddie laugh into his quinoa.

Richie Tozier had a more nasal voice than Eddie would have guessed, but he sounded excited and friendly and exactly like the kind of person who would pretend to send his friend and coworker gay porn on the company computers. He also sounded exactly like someone who would wear Hawaiian shirts, as most late-nite radio hosts do, and Eddie wasn’t surprised at all when he found Richie’s host biography on the station’s website and the photo featured a blinding, heavily patterned, and ill-fitting Hawaiian shirt.

The photo was kind of terrible. Richie was completely washed out by fluorescent lighting and obviously kind of sweaty, and he looked to be about halfway into a smile with his eyes still partially closed.

Unfortunately, he was kind of Eddie’s type. Eddie had been hesitant to define a type, since he was so, so closeted and so, so married (to a _woman_ , of all things) and he had no plans to become divorced. It seemed pointless to think about what kind of guy he might be into when he was probably going to spend the rest of his life choking down his wife’s healthy dinners and tolerating her predilection for evening game shows. Even so, Eddie stared at the picture of Richie for so long, just resting his fork in his mouth, that he started to drool around the edge of the fork. He sputtered, dropped the fork, wiped his mouth, and focused up just in time to hear Richie’s nasally voice come back to air.

“ _That was_ It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me _by my personal family friend and godfather, Billy Joel. Up next, something my niece wanted me to play, even though I’m too old to know who this band is and she’s too young to stay up until three A.M. to listen to my show. Here’s_ Naughty Boy _by - is it really called that?_ ” Richie’s voice got farther away, presumably leaning away from the microphone. “ _Is it really called that? Naughty Boy, for real? Uh, by Pentagon! Full disclosure, I didn’t listen to this before I agreed to play it, so the station should fire her instead of me_.”

If Richie was too old to know the song, Eddie would be too. It didn’t matter. He let the sweet, electronic music filter through the grain of his computer speakers, and he tried to guess what Richie would have to say about it when he came back to air.

Eddie sat back in his desk chair and closed his eyes. The office was quiet except for the hum of Eddie’s computer and the music which played from it. Not for the last time, Eddie thought about the vending machine downstairs, and he thought _what would Richie do_?

Richie, Eddie thought, wouldn’t even debate the matter. He’d already be elbows deep in Rice Krispy Treats. He’d be talking with his mouth full, probably, and Eddie would be wrinkling his nose at the sight of partially chewed food -

And Richie came back to air. And he joked about the song. And he gave a shout out to his niece. And he kept talking. And he kept talking. And he kept talking. And Eddie kept listening.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you liked it! come hang out with me on tumblr and twitter @casegenitive!


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